WHOLESOME REMEDIES

摘要

Somewhere in a Dutch laboratory, bees are reportedly being trained to test for COVID-19. Coaxed into smelling samples, they're rewarded for positive identification with sugar syrup in a textbook effort to harness animal senses using classical conditioning (InsectSense and Wageningen Bioveterinary Research 2021). It's just the newest in a string of attempts to reap medical wisdom from the animal world stretching back throughout human history, attempts that have often been dazzling successes. But before we turn to the (unspecified) bees to solve our human health problems, there are first questions to be asked about the medical wisdom (or folly) of bees when it comes to their own health.